Sony says the 220 layoffs at Bungie were made in the name of—you guessed it—things like 'portfolio optimization' and enhancing 'the efficiency of the business'
Post-layoff justifications are fast becoming their own brand of technobabble. In case you're out of the loop, Bungie laid off 220 employees late last month due to "rising costs of development", "economic conditions", and all the things you're used to hearing by now.
The initial statement did at least paint some kind of proper picture. A model of "incubation projects" that "stretched our talent too thin, too quickly" was cited, with the layoffs characterised as a restructuring and refocusing on the studio's central games: Destiny and Marathon.
Despite that, the restructuring blindsided several employees, while others claim the layoffs—caused by an over-promising and under-delivering studio—had been in the pipeline regardless of whether or not The Final Shape (Destiny 2's latest expansion) performed well.
Strap yourself in, because Sony has more buzzwords to pitch at you like so much spaghetti thrown against a grim, industry-wide wall. During the quarterly Sony Group Corporation's financial results briefing (thanks, GamesRadar) Sony Interactive Entertainment chairman (plus Sony Group CFO and COO) Hiroki Totoki stated when asked about the company's restructuring efforts:
"For this restructuring the purpose is cost, the structure, and portfolio optimization. Those are the purposes. And simultaneously, we have to enhance the efficiency of the business." Totoki then went on to state that "there will be some re-allocation of the resources" to the wider Sony group, concluding with a quick: "We'd like to optimise our overall studio structure, that's all, thank you."
These are words that have been translated by a live interpreter—but I'm still pretty confident they're downright fluff on content alone. We've seen this kind of vagueness before from Microsoft after the shuttering of Tango Gameworks, a unique allergy that occurs when you go above a certain pay threshold that makes you unable to answer direct questions.
Cue an avalanche of waffling about economic conditions, streamlining, optimisation, and the oft-invoked prayers to the ancient chthonic gods of flexibility. These are all words often brought up by the exact leadership responsible for placing their studios at risk in the first place—leadership which, barring extreme circumstances, will be keeping its job. The grim tidings of 2023 and 2024 will continue until the efficiencies have had their portfolios optimised and the leanness becomes flexibly refocused, or something.